Re: OldWorld floppy images
Hi Jeremie!
I downloaded the images.
The first thing I noticed was that the root.img was more than
1.440 MB long.
The second thing that I noticed was that "fdformat" and
"superformat" don't work on powerpc hardware, so I can't create a
1.920 MB formatted floppy to put root.img onto. For example, when
I try to do "fdformat /dev/fd0" I get an error message:
"ioctl(FDFMTBEG): Inappropriate ioctl for device". So the largest
image I can write to media is 1.440 MB.
I decided to try the boot.img anyway since it was the right size.
I could at least see if my systems would boot with it.
The third thing I noticed was that the floppy drives hadn't been
used for years (literally) and they were *dirty*. The blank
floppy disks I had around the house were about the same age, so I
couldn't trust them either. So I went out and got a drive
cleaning kit and a box of brand-new floppy disks. (I had to go to
three stores before I found one that carried floppy drive cleaning
kits. Floppy disks are seriously going out of style!) After a
thorough cleaning...
I was able to write the boot.img and read it back without error.
The original boot.img and the read-back file compared bit-for-bit,
so I figured I had a good one.
First, I tried it on the machine that wrote it (a beige G3 at 300
MHz). It succeeded in booting (got a "happy-mac" icon that
changed after a while to an icon of Tux Penguin snuggling up to a
happy-mac.) Of course, when it ejected the boot floppy (presumably
because it wanted the root floppy inserted -- though there was no
indication on the screen that this was the case. I assume that is
normal?) I had no root floppy to insert. But I felt good that I'd
gotten that far!
Next I tried it on a different machine (a powermac 6500 at
225MHz). It got to the point of the Tux-and-Mac icon, but the
drive made grinding noises and it never ejected the disk. It just
hung. I believe that the floppy drive on that machine is
terminally old/tired/flakey, even after a couple of thorough
cleanings. It's not altogether surprising, since in a previous
life, this machine was used (and abused!) by students in a public
computer lab. I'll try swapping the floppy drive with a known
good one and try again. Though that may take a couple of days.
So, can we make a root.img file that will fit on a 1.440 MB disk?
Hope this helps!
Rick
Rick Thomas wrote:
>
> Thanks,
>
> I'll give that a try.
>
> Rick
>
> On Sunday, March 21, 2004, at 06:47 PM, Jeremie Koenig wrote:
>
> > On Sat, Mar 20, 2004 at 01:06:55PM -0500, Rick Thomas wrote:
> >> OK, I'm willing to give it a try. Where do I start?
> >
> > You can find some floppy images at
> > http://sprite.fr.eu.org/d-i-oldworld/
> > I haven't tested them at all, so please tell me how it goes !
> >
> > You won't be able to install any bootloader, but IIRC chrooting into
> > /target and running quikconfig works. Maybe you'll also need to do some
> > OpenFirmware configuration to boot into the new system.
> >
> > Good luck !
> >
> > --
> > Jeremie Koenig <sprite@sprite.fr.eu.org>
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